Okay the thread below is getting a bit lengthy so I figured I'd post this here.

Quote:

Years ago in the Golden Age there was an android Human Torch. He overloaded and shut down in the 50's and was gathering dust.

Quote:

Timely Comics becomes Marvel Comics.

Quote:

The Fantastic Four are created and Johnny Storm is now the human torch.

Quote:

Years later in FF annual 4, the Mad Thinker reactivated the android Torch and he fight Johnny and ends up deactivated again. His body is left in the Thinker's lab by Reed as Reed stated a lab was where he was born and should rest......okay that is just stupid writing. Reed should have at least taken the android Torch to FF HQ for storage and study.

Leaving him with the Thinker was insanity.

Quote:

In the Submariner series at the time, around issue 14 (I think), the Torch's old partner Toro was lured into a trap by the Thinker who had somehow enslaved a town and staged a funeral for the android Torch as bait. Toro gets captured and enslaved, breaks free and perishes in a fiery explosion as he attempted to destroy the Thinker's rocket ship.
Go figure....a character with immunity to fire and can absorb flame/heat killed in a fiery explosion.......

The Thinker was getting a lot of page space back then.

Quote:

So we have the android Torch buried for years in a forgotten and unknown grave in a small town cemetery and of course the town's memory of it is wiped.

Wait! What? Where/when was this revealed?

Quote:

Yet Ultron apparently confronted the Thinker, Ultron wanted an android to make as his own and Thinker tells him of the lab where the Torch was left after his failed attack on the FF. Ultron finds the Torch there and takes him to Horton for reformatting and the Vision is created.

Would have made a cool Japanese cartoon.

I'm over being annoyed by this. It did nothing for the Vision as a character but I guess it did something for the Human Torch as a character. It provided closure as to what happened to his body.

Quote:

Thus the Torch is gone forever.....yet there is a Torch in that grave.

Quote:

Slight oversight by the writers and editors perhaps?

Quote:

Hence comes Immortus as that plot device to fix this error by using his time powers to temporally replicate the Torch. One Torch becomes the Vision and the other lays dormant for years until the Avengers West Coast find him and switch him back on.

So the whole reason for doing the Torch/Vision story goes out the window. Did Jim Hammond join the West Coast Avengers?

Wait - is it easy to switch Jim Hammond back on? Could Reed have done it? The Thinker did it.

Quote:

Thus the explanation Hank Pym had in Avengers West 50 of Vision being built from spare parts of the Torch is tossed out and the Ultron reformatting the Torch origin is essentially restored.

Oh! So Avengers West Coast initially tried to say the Vision wasn't actually a rebuilt Torch. Ultron just found some parts and used them.

Quote:

The Torch that became the Vision was rebuilt and reformatted by Ultron with assist from Horton who was killed by Ultron.

Because there were two Torches. Because Immortus.

Quote:

Truly this is as big a Gordian Knot as the continuity/retcons to Captain America and the Red Skull from the Golden Age to the Marvel Universe.

So here's my question:

We have the Vision. We have the Human Torch. Both are active in the present day at this time if I'm understanding you right.

Why do we need Simon Williams?

Avengers West Coast #42 Byrne has taken over the book and thus starts Vision Quest.

Vision has gone missing and the trail leads them to a govt. facility where the Vision is in pieces, his synthetic skin floating in a tube and his memory banks including all back ups at Avengers HQ are WIPED.

They get explanations and out is brought an older but still alive Horton who states the Vision IS NOT THE TORCH.

Teh Scarlet Witch is horrified to say the least. Pym rebuilds the Vision but his skin is now chalk white (think Data from TNG) and though Pym recosntructed the data of Vision's programming, Wonder Man would not let himself be copied again because he loves Wanda.

Wanda under goes more trauma as she is possessed by an alien parasite then later becomes a bride of Set in Atlantis Attacks.

Vision Quest culminates in Avengers West Coast 50 where the clues lead them to the secret grave of the Torch that the Thinker created way back in Submariner 14 (1966) to trap and enslave TORO. Pym is speaking to the mayor to get permission to exhume the grave even though there is no memory or record of the grave.

The Scarlet Witch at this point is now NOT a model of mental health and is becoming as arrogant as her father magneto and imperiously waves her hand and her hex powers flip the switch as it were and The Torch bursts out his grave. Wonder Man cashes him, convinces him to return and he and the Vision meet each other.

Pym later concludes Ultron built Vision from spare parts of the Torch.

Avengers Forever #8 gives a full explanation of how Immortus replicates the Torch and why....to ensure Wanda never has kids of her own due to the power they'd wield. Vision and the Torch were merely pawns to Immortus, nothing more. We also learn the history of the Space Phantom and all the times the Phantom(s) attacked the Avengers and how a Phantom was disguised as Horton to sow the seeds of confusion about Vision not being the Torch.

Ultron took the Torch that was in the lab after FF annual 4, Immortus then placed the other torch in that lab and made sure the Thinker would find it and come up with the plan to ensare Toro, and bury the Torch.

Reed Richards could easily have studied and repaired the Torch just as the Thinker did. Pym also knows the Vision and Torch's construction rather well.